I thought about my cake and how there was a tiny statue of a girl on top of the icing with a golden four held to her stomach. She wore a fluffy blue dress and smiled, so different from me, so much what my mother wanted from me but never got. I wanted to smile like her, but I wondered how anyone could smile on their fourth birthday, especially with that big golden four in their stomach like the girl on the cake. I pictured the number, big and sharp and pointy, embedded inside my abdominal cavity, poking me every time I moved. Three was so round and curvy, why couldn't I just go back to the way I was before? I sulked some more. I convinced myself that I would just have to get used to it. If the girl on the cake could smile while wearing a dress like that and carrying the pointy number in her stomach, I could too.

Needless to say, fourteen was a very tough year for me. When I turn fourty-four I will be waiting with a bottle of Pepto-Bismal by my bed.